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As you have no doubt come to expect, this week (plus a couple of days) of Bike Month has LOTS off possibilities for riding, socializing, and enjoying RVA in the process. Here’s the official page.

And in case you missed the coverage, Mayor Stoney took a ride on Bike to Work day last Friday to announce that the city is committing to figuring out how to build what insiders know as the “missing link,” a path that will connect the southern end of the Potterfield Bridge to the rest of the trail system on the south side of the James!

May 31

A nicely detailed piece in Style Weekly about the future of bike infrastructure in Richmond. I appreciate the emphasis on making connections between bike lanes and paths. It’s sometimes for understandable reasons, but there are too many places where a bike lane just ends and you’re thrown back into traffic. Not so inviting for people less comfortable on the road.

Using a bike messenger as a source for gauging the safety of Richmond’s streets is misleading for the same reason that it kind of makes sense: they spend more time than anyone else on Richmond streets on a bike, so the odds of something happening are just greater. That said, I came away from a recent trip to Minneapolis feeling sad about the culture of driving in Richmond. People there were so courteous and cautious around pedestrians and people on bikes I could hardly believe it. How can we change the culture of driving in Richmond???

Bike Month in RVA just keeps getting bigger and more fun every year. Check out the schedule on the Bike Walk RVA blog. There’s something almost every day of the month! LOTS of opportunities to get out on two wheels, have fun, enjoy spring, and meet people. There are even events this weekend, starting with the Lakeside Pedal and Gears festival and an organized family ride from Bellevue to the festival.

In the midst of getting ready for all the fun parts of Bike Month (get ready for a lot of posts!), it’s also important to focus on the safety part.

Bike Walk RVA is asking you to sign on to the Vision Zero pledge. It asks you to commit to doing you part to bring traffic deaths of all kinds to zero. Sound too ambitious? It’s possible, but only if we see that traffic deaths are preventable and not acceptable. If over 40,000 people died in some other way in a year, we’d probably be freaked out and doing all kinds of things to change that. But somehow we see traffic deaths as just “accidents” that we can’t do anything about. (See this recent post from VA Bicycling Federation for more about Vision Zero).

Even worse, the number of deaths has jumped over the last two years. Traffic deaths involving a motor vehicle in 2016 were 6% higher than the previous year. That year was the first year since 2007 that more than 40,000 people had died in crashes. According to a New York Times article, experts see increased distraction by smart phones as a significant factor, but also speed and other familiar factors, along with more driving overall. Police are generally pretty lax about enforcing speed and other traffic laws these days, and lawmakers don’t expect to score points by restricting how people drive.

We can do something. Part of it is changing road design and speed limits. But for each of us it also means driving slower when in a car. It means yielding to pedestrians when you’re in a car or on a bike. It means being visible when you’re walking or biking. It means resisting being distracted by your technology while doing any of these things. It means shifting into an “I’m part of a community on the road” mentality and away from “I need to get where I need to go” mindset. Lives are at stake, and it could be yours or the life of someone close to you.

Reminder that the city is hosting an event at the Main Library tonight from 5-7 p.m. to gather feedback on the almost-complete plans for several new bike lanes in the city. And it’s a good opportunity to just show that there is wide interest in and support for better bike infrastructure. Hope to see you there.